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jon_mckenney 's review for:
The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
Edit: as I figured, re-read and a class on this bumped it up. Still a bit of a slog, but in a fruitful way. Knowing how everything fits together enhanced greatly.
4 stars? 3? I’ve been on a generous kick, so I’ll be harsher for poor TMM.
Many more thoughts will come during the class on this book. I appreciated it a lot, and am excited for discussions/ papers to come from it. I am not gonna lie, a times it was a slog and a half. Climbing a (magic) mountain indeed… but boredom/ drudgery can be a tool and suits the story and it’s setting well enough. Appreciate it, but still doesn’t make it easiest to read. Being honest, if I had to read one more Naphta/Settembrini convo, I’d have lost my mind.
All that being said, funnier than I expected (so many of these books are, I feel I said the same with Demons) and vivid characters. Poor Joachim. A lot of very good philosophy pops up in here, and Mann’s little scenes capture and play them out nicely. Beautiful descriptions of food and dress, and I want to know if there’s something there.
I think reading it as a allegory for pre WWI Europe works at a simple level. The ending of a bourgeois, nominally polite age is great to watch. Decadence is a word that comes to mind. Ideas of the privatization of healthcare and connections between physical / emotional/ spiritual health are here, and offer avenues to explore. Hans Castorp as a bisexual icon?
The review here is a placeholder, I hope, while I digest the book more fully.
4 stars? 3? I’ve been on a generous kick, so I’ll be harsher for poor TMM.
Many more thoughts will come during the class on this book. I appreciated it a lot, and am excited for discussions/ papers to come from it. I am not gonna lie, a times it was a slog and a half. Climbing a (magic) mountain indeed… but boredom/ drudgery can be a tool and suits the story and it’s setting well enough. Appreciate it, but still doesn’t make it easiest to read. Being honest, if I had to read one more Naphta/Settembrini convo, I’d have lost my mind.
All that being said, funnier than I expected (so many of these books are, I feel I said the same with Demons) and vivid characters. Poor Joachim. A lot of very good philosophy pops up in here, and Mann’s little scenes capture and play them out nicely. Beautiful descriptions of food and dress, and I want to know if there’s something there.
I think reading it as a allegory for pre WWI Europe works at a simple level. The ending of a bourgeois, nominally polite age is great to watch. Decadence is a word that comes to mind. Ideas of the privatization of healthcare and connections between physical / emotional/ spiritual health are here, and offer avenues to explore. Hans Castorp as a bisexual icon?
The review here is a placeholder, I hope, while I digest the book more fully.